(Part 1)
(Part 2)
She entered
the small room she called a home by climbing through the window facing the back
alley. Before she had come here, she had tied a red strip of cloth to the
flagpole on the tower of Whispersong the Knowing, a few neighbourhoods away.
This was to signal the status of tonight's mission without ever coming into
contact with the next link in the faction chain. The peculiar mode of
communication was both for practical reasons and for secrecy and ensuring that
no one link knew too much. There were hundreds or thousands of agents working
for her faction, and meeting another agent in person was a lot of logistics for
such a simple message.
She removed
her cloak, which was tan and black. It was designed in a very particular way.
The hood was tan, with two streaks of black running down each side from about
eye-height, forming a jagged curve and growing in thickness until it met the
lower part of the cloak at the shoulders and blended into the blackness of it.
It had been made to resemble the eagle that followed her when she worked, the
Osprey. She was a Junior Agent, and many mercenaries weren't given a proper
Name until they had worked their way into a faction leader's closest circle of
agents. Still, whispers and rumours about an "Osprey" had started to
surface, and this was, at the moment, her proudest achievement.
Tonight she
would have no trouble falling asleep, satisfied with the night's events. The
feeling of success was just enough to keep her mind from wandering to
unpleasant responsibilities and duties of tomorrow.
---
"No",
she said, "I haven't heard anything more from him, I'm sure he'll send a
letter soon".
She wasn't
sure whether the lie about her brother was a betrayal or a mercy. But she was
forced to believe the latter, lest the guilt of it tear her conscience to
shreds.
Osprey
grimaced slightly and felt pained when her mother winced, her old bones aching as
she sat down on the edge of her bed. It was a pain like no other. It wasn't a
pain of the flesh, much worse, it was a pain of the soul. Not a pain like
disappointment, or sadness, or even despair. It wasn't even like the pain of
sorrow and the loss of meaning after a bad breakup – less acute perhaps, but so
much more disturbing. She couldn't help remembering when she was a little girl
and her mother had been young, and fit, and she could remember thinking so
highly of her. Her mother could do magical, wonderful things then, like cooking
mouth watering meals, and curing the pain of a freshly bruised arm with a kiss.
And as she watched her aging mother settle slowly on her bed she felt that
somehow the magic had left her, or that the magic of adulthood was a simple
trick that lost its magic once you were shown how it worked. And she felt the
pain that children feel seeing their mother or father hurting. Staying there
became unbearable, although that broke her heart.
She walked
the streets of her neighbourhood, which were still bustling with life and would
continue to do so for some time before the dusk fell over them and signalled
the end of the day. She felt wholly uncomfortable walking in the street, and
this worried her. She would be much happier on the rooftops, springing from
house to house, seeing the world from above, free from the maze that the houses
forced upon the people on the ground. She worried that the more time she spent
up there, at night, running errands of action, the more she would feel
uncomfortable in the streets, with the rest of the people. The more she stayed
up there, the more she wouldn't belong here, until she was so removed from it
that she could never return to the streets, to people, to daylight.
She made
her way from the trader's neighbourhoods and into darker and poorer ones. A
neighbourhood could be anything from fifteen to a hundred houses in size. They
could be neighbourhoods because the same merchant owned all the houses, because
a church had taken it upon themselves to care for the faith of people within a
given area, because a faction leader had sent an agent to govern over it, or
any other reason that made it sort of sensible for a group of residents to band
together.
Osprey
walked down a street very similar to the ones in her own neighbourhood, except
it was dead quiet – without life. There were no traders here, no smithies or
bakeries or leatherworkers. There wasn't even a pub or a brothel. She arrived
at something that would have been a decent house about two generations ago. Now
it was so crooked and misaligned and withered, the wood so rotten and
tormented, that it seemed like it would collapse should a drunken fool collide
with anything load bearing. Osprey didn't want to go inside, but it wasn't
because she was afraid of it collapsing. She gently climbed the outside stairs
leading to the second story apartments, and entered.
She found
her brother sitting in a fetal position in the corner, his head resting on his
knees. In his room was a blanket, a wooden chair with two of its legs missing,
and a simple wardrobe with four drawers, all empty. He hadn't noticed her.
"Tristan",
she tried, not daring to expect a response.
He moved
his head slowly and looked up at her. He didn't smile when he saw her – he frowned
sadly and looked at her with pathetic, pleading eyes.
"Have
you...", he started, his voice weak and trembling, "... Have you
brought me..." He couldn't finish the sentence.
"No",
replied Osprey, "I tell you every time, Tristan. I will not bring you your
poison."
Tristan
looked away, stared at the wall with a look of disappointment and despair. She
kneeled down next to him, pausing to assess him for a moment. He was so thin,
and filthy. Part of her had immense sympathy for him, her brother, and wanted
more than anything to help him. The other part hated him for what he had done
to himself, to their mother, to her, and knew that whatever help she could
provide he would refuse, unless it was a pouch of faintly pink powder. She sat
a basket filled with a sausage, tomatoes, and a loaf of bread down next to him.
"Please,
Tristan. Eat it before it rots this time. I beg of you"
Tristan
still stared at the wall, motionless. She caught herself being almost impressed
he had kept his head up for so long. She got up slowly. Tending to their mother
was bad enough, but the state her brother was in was so horrible she had
seriously considered never coming back, and she did so again.
On her way
back to her own lodgings, she couldn't help thinking about her mother and
brother yet again, tiring though it was. Tristan had left home years ago to
seek fortune in other parts of Ymra. Their father had already died in a drunken
stupor at the pub at that point, and Osprey and her mother had been left to
fend for themselves. Tristan sent letters home from various regions of Ymra
from time to time, but success eluded him. When he finally came home, he had
less than he had left with, apart from a strong addiction to the pink powder
sometimes called cherrydust. He wouldn't meet with his mother, and made Osprey
promise that she wouldn't tell their mother of the fate that had befallen him.
The first few years he maintained presence of mind enough to keep sending
letters, telling his mother that he was fine somewhere else. Eventually he
became so debilitated by the drugs that the letters stopped.
Every day
their mother asked for him, and Osprey always told her that he was probably
fine, and that surely there would be another letter soon. And she would have
felt even worse about it if it wasn't for the fact that their poor mother had
no hope of remembering a conversation from one day to the next, so every time
Osprey promised a letter, it would genuinely comfort the old woman.
Osprey
walked through the darkening streets and longed to be on the rooftops. She
simply could not wait to don her mercenary gear, meet up with her companion
animal and young apprentice and see if there were jobs to be done this night.
And if there weren't, she would simply enjoy the height, explore, practice new
routes. At least she would be removed from the miserable conditions of the ground level.
